Saving Dean
by staceycj
Summary: Balthazar comes to Sam and asks him to help save Dean.  But saving Dean takes an unexpected turn.   Takes place after Sam gets his soul back
1. Chapter 1

Sam stood by the motel room window, drinking a soda, watching the night drift by. Ever since he got his soul back, ever since he'd BEEN back, Sam liked to take a step back and enjoy the little things about their not so wonderful life. He'd finally been able to put all of that hostility and anger he had felt towards Dean for so long behind him, and focus on the fact that his brother would do anything for him, did do anything for him, and that sometimes it was okay to be the little brother.

Things that had bothered him once upon a time, just didn't seem that important anymore. The big things, the things that he had always taken for granted—Dean, Bobby, The Impala (of all things), were there and they were all together and happy, well as happy as anyone could be who was a hunter.

He smiled to himself and downed the last of his soda and turned around intent on getting on some sweat pants and getting ready for bed. However, when he turned Balthazar was standing right in front of him. Sam jumped and made a startled sound. "Geeze! Give a guy a heart attack will ya?" Sam asked and ran a hand through his hair, sat the soda can down and leaned against the dresser, willing himself not to put his hand to his chest.

"For a hardened hunter you sure do startle easily." Balthazar replied flippantly.

"Usually something makes a sound." Balthazar reached behind Sam and picked up the soda can.

"From what I understand your brother went straight for the hard stuff when he got out of hell. Must be true what they say." Sam quirked an eyebrow of curiosity. "They always said you were the more sensible of the two."

"I don't know if sensible is the right word. I did do a triple indy into the hot box with Lucifer riding under my skin. One might not call that exactly sensible."

"Well, it never seems to matter with you Winchesters anyway. You are like cats. 9 lives and all, and for some reason whenever one of us drops you…you land on your feet. Curious thing really."

Sam sighed, he hated the foreplay with angels. They were sarcastic bastards. "You didn't come here to talk about my taste in post hell beverages. So out with it. What can I help you with Balthazar?"

"Your brother needs your help." Sam's eyes widened and his posture went from relaxed to stiffened in less time than it took for an angel to appear out of thin air. Everything was going so right. They were together, the hunts were coming and they weren't save the world huge, and he and Dean were just able to be brothers again. Just able to catch some crap movies at the dollar theater, do touristy things in cities they hadn't been to before, talk, catch up, just be okay with each other and their lots in life. But of course something would happen, it made sense after all, Winchesters could only be happy for a finite amount of time, and then something had to screw it up. And if an angel was coming to get him to his brother things must be screwed up really bad…especially if the angel coming to get him wasn't Cass.

"What happened? Where is he? Is Cass with him? Why did you waste so much time?" Sam was moving as he spoke, frantically pulling on boots, grabbing for his coat that he had thrown carelessly across the back of a chair, and throwing it on in less time than it took most people to open their mouths.

"I'll take you there, you just have to remember to help your brother."

"What in the hell are you talking about?" Sam asked incredulously. "Of course I'll help my brother!"

"Alright. Sam. Thank you." Balthazar touched Sam's forehead and his feet

landed on the sidewalk in an alley in the middle of the night. Sam looked around trying to get his barring, he was in a city, he heard horns honking, he saw lights flashing, and he thought he heard the disappearing footfalls of someone running at top speed. He felt something hit his ankle, and he heard the gurgling of a man struggling to breathe through blood, and his own blood went cold. It had to be Dean. This is why Balthazar wanted him, this is why; he wanted Sam to be there when Dean died. Sam cursed Balthazar, if he hadn't wasted so much damn time in getting him here, there would be something more to do to help Dean other than sitting with him while he took his last breath. Sam had heard this song before and he never ever wanted to hear it again.

He didn't want to look down, but he felt the hand slap at his ankles again and he forced himself to look down and what he saw took his breath away. He had looked down into his own face choking on his own blood. Sam swallowed hard and tried to keep the panic at bay.

He took a step back and tried to reconcile what he was seeing with the rational part of his brain. It came up empty. Where in the hell had Balthazar dropped him? How was watching himself die going to help his brother? Before he could take another step back, the dying form grabbed onto the leg of his jeans and gave him such a haltingly plaintive look that Sam sank to his knees next to the man on the ground. If Sam had a clone out there this was the man.

"Help." He choked. "Help.." He tried to cough.

"Shhh. It's okay. Just let go." Sam found himself saying, knowing how much it hurt to die, and how much more it hurt to actually cling to the last of your life rather than to just simply let go.

His clone shook his head and threw his hand towards Sam's chest and muttered. "Find Dean." And with the vital message delivered the man on the ground, bleeding and suffering finally let go, and the last breath in his lungs expelled out in a cloud of warm breath on cold air.

Sam looked down into his own hazel eyes, he ran a hand down his mouth and muttered "Oh God." He took a moment to gather his wits about him and reached down and closed his clone's eyes, surprised to find moisture at the corners.

He rocked back on his haunches and cursed Balthazar. "What in the hell am I supposed to do here?" He asked no one in particular and covered his mouth with his hand and tried to figure out what his next move was.

"I'm sorry." Sam said as he started feeling the man's pockets for his cell phone and his wallet. He found the man's cell phone, but no wallet. He looked around the man on the ground, got up and went the way of the footfalls and thrown into the next alleyway was Samuel Winchester's wallet. Well, at least his ID and his library card. Everything in the wallet that had at one point held credit cards, debit cards, or money, was gone.

_So he was killed for his money. How is this supposed to help Dean?_ Sam wondered and looked around the alley way for any signs of the man who had robbed Sam's double and all he found was the wallet and no matter how carefully he combed the area between the dead body and where the wallet had been thrown, he was unable to find anything that would point him in the direction of the murderer.

He was kneeling next to his double's dead body when the phone that he had pulled of his clone began to ring, he looked at the display and it simply read "home" and hesitantly he answered.

"Hello?"

"Sam!" It was a woman's voice on the other end, one he had heard before, but one he hadn't heard often enough to be able to identify solely on his name.

"Yeah?"

"Have you found him? Have you found Dean?"

"No. No. I haven't found Dean yet."

"I've called all of the hospitals, and I called the morgues." There were tears in this person's voice now and Sam understood the feeling. There had been times in his life where he had had to make the same calls looking for his brother, and it never went well, no matter the answer. "Sam. I called your father." Sam swallowed; he was speaking with his mother. Not some weird fucked up angel bastardized version of his mother, nor was she the ghost of his mother, nor was she an illusion, nor was she too young to know who he was. This was the mother he was supposed to have had, been raised by, been nurtured by, it made the lump that was already in his throat worsen.

"Your dad…he's been out all night looking for Dean too and neither one of us has had any luck. We have to find him before he does something stupid." Sam's face went slack as he looked down at the dead man before him and he knew without any doubt, without any hesitation, Dean had something to do with the death of the man at his feet and the realization nearly knocked him over.


	2. Chapter 2

AN: Please guys, let me know what you think about this one…is it worth continuing?

"Sam? Sam? Are you still there sweetie?" Sam shook his head and got his wits about him as quickly as he could.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm here sorry.." Swallowing hard, Sam got down on the ground again and began patting the dead man down hoping that he had car keys on him, but he knew before he even began the pat down that there would be no keys, whoever took off with the money, most certainly wasn't going to leave car keys in a jacket pocket.

"Where are you?"

"Ummm…not sure…hold on.." Sam stood and hurried to the entrance of the alley way and looked for the nearest street sign. I'm at the corner of Cheery Street and Needmore Road." He said making sure not to tell her that he was standing in an alley way.

"Okay. I need you to meet me back home." Sam took a deep breath and heaved a sigh, he was going to have to tell her that he didn't have a car, and he didn't want to do that, didn't want her to see his cards too early in his investigation.

"I can't do that Mom. My car is gone."

"What? Where did it go?" She asked frantically. Sam felt a smile curl his lips, he'd always wanted a mother to cluck over him, and now that the mother hen was clucking, he was amused to note that it was the same sound a clucking big brother made when he was worried about a little brother. Maybe all of those years that he had pinned away for a mother, he should have just paid better attention and realized that he had a mother…granted she came in male form, and had a snarly bad ass attitude during Sam's more formative years, but he had a mother all the same. The thought made him homesick and heartsick all at the same time. He had to find Dean and help him, had to make sure that he was okay, so he could go back to his Dean, who was out hustling pool, making them some cash for the next couple of weeks, who didn't know Sam wasn't anywhere near the motel that Dean had issued explicit orders that said under no uncertain terms was Sam supposed to leave the room, much less their reality. If Dean came back to an empty motel room he was going to freak.

"Some guy came after me, took my money and my keys." Sam said finally trying to throw in a frustrated edge to his voice so it would sound like he was legitimately upset that his car had been taken.

"Are you okay?" She asked that same unwavering concern lacing her question.

"I'm fine, they just ruffed me up a little—"

"What do you mean they roughed you up?"

_Crap, wrong thing to say_. He thought and rubbed his forehead.

"I'm fine Mom." Was what he finally settled on saying, and he was okay, but if Dean was any indication, it wouldn't matter how many times he said he was fine, or how true the statement was, until Dean saw him with his own two eyes and was able to check him over for injuries he wasn't going to believe him.

Sam was most certainly correct in his assumption because the words weren't completely out of his mouth before she began asking, "Are you bleeding? Is anything broken? How bad is it?"

"Just shaken up a bit, that's it Mom. I'm really oaky."

"I'm on my way, I'm only five minutes out. Call the police. Stay safe until I get there."

"Okay mom." He lied. He wasn't going to call the police, just in case the man who had shot and killed his double was Dean, something that he had a hard time wrapping his mind around—but he sensed that it was a strong possibility in this reality, and the last thing he was going to do was have his brother caught by the cops, before he had a chance to help him, had a chance to fix whatever in the world was going on here, because Dean needed his help, and Sam would never leave his brother to just deal with something this big on his own. That wasn't what he did. That wasn't what THEY did. That wasn't what Dean taught him.

"I love you Sam." He'd waited his whole life to hear those words come from her lips. And his heart melted and he shut his eyes tightly and tried to savor the moment and then the realization that he had just lied to her rushed front and center. Instant regret over the lie flowed over him and he could feel the blush creeping up his cheeks. He never wanted to lie to another loved one as long as he lived, and he had. But it was at the price of saving Dean, and that always came above all else.

"I love you too." He managed with only a modicum of hoarseness in his voice.

He hung up with his "mother", shoved the phone in his pocket, tried, once again, to get his wits about him, and headed back to the body, he needed to find more clues as to what in the hell was going on. He knelt down again and began a thorough search of the man's pockets and finally, when he reached into the last pocket on the man's leather jacket he heard something crinkle, and he pulled it out and simply found an address.

12 Sleepy View Inn.

"A motel." Sam said. If there was one thing Winchesters knew it was motels and Sam knew exactly how to find this particular one, he had stayed there a couple of times before on one of their many trips in and through Kansas. It was just on the outskirts out town, in the more unsavory part of town usually populated by prostitutes and drug dealers and addicts, and the occasional hunter. He wanted to take this lead and play it out but he wouldn't be able to get there in time before his mother would be there to "save" him. He couldn't leave her waiting and worrying.

And with his mother showing up he was going to have to do something quickly to make himself look a little more like the guy lying on the floor. They had the same general build, face and even hair length, but the guy on the ground most certainly had enough money to dress better. Sam looked around quickly and made sure no one was there and sat his double up and stripped his jacket off of shoulders, and discarded his old warn green jacket and slid the leather onto his own back. "I'm sorry. But I promised you that I will help Dean. I will save him." He checked the body one final time looking for anything that the other man wore that he would need to assimilate. He pulled off a necklace with a silver cross and strung it around his own neck, and headed out of the alley way, doing his best not to look back.

Mary arrived in less time than expected and when Sam emerged from the alley way, she got out of her truck and started yelling at him the moment she stepped foot on blacktop. "What in the hell were you doing in an alleyway! That's not a safe place!" She hurried to him and began her inspection, checking everywhere to see if he was hurt or bleeding. She found fresh blood on the leather and she looked up at him, eyes wide and frightened.

"Where?"

"It's just a cut. I'm fine. I swear."

"They came at you with a knife?" she asked voice high and a touch wild.

"Yeah," he put his hands out to keep her from either tackling him or screaming, he wasn't sure which, "but he didn't try to stab me, he just cut me. That's it mom. I swear. I swear to God." Lie number two, and this one he hoped she bought and didn't try to look any closer, because there was no cut, no cut skin and no cut clothes and there was no other way he could think of to explain the blood on the jacket. She bought it and she hugged him tightly.

"Baby, don't you have the sense God gave you?"

"I'm sorry mom." He said and wrapped his arms around his mother.

"I can't find one son, I can't lose you too." Sam looked down at the top of his mother's curly blonde hair and wished that he had been given instructions on what in the hell to do when he got here, what he was supposed to fix, how he was going to fix it…something.

"What have you and Dad found?" Sam asked finally.

"Nothing. He called your dad a few minutes ago looking for money, he wouldn't tell your dad where he was, just that he needed money, a lot of money."

"Dad said no didn't he?"

"Don't' Sam."

"What?"

"Don't get angry. You know your dad." She said and put a hand to her mouth and tried to stop the tears. "Your Dad doesn't have that kind of money, your brother knew that." The tears flowed anyway. "Oh God. What if he's in real trouble Sam? What happens if he gets hurt trying to get the money, what if he robs someone, what if he shoots someone? Oh Sam. We have to find him before something really bad happens to him." Sam pulled her back into his embrace and his mind flashed back to the copse in the alley way. It was too late something bad had already happened.

"I'm going to find him mom. I'll find him."


	3. Chapter 3

Mary tried desperately to convince Sam to come home with her, because she wanted one of her boys with her, wanted to make sure that at least one of them was okay, but Sam heard the underlying stress in her voice, she was scared, and he didn't think all of it had to do with making sure her boys were safe.

"Mom, don't worry. Dad will be there." He said attempting to comfort her. He had to find a way to be alone, he needed to go over everything he knew and do some serious investigative work into what he didn't know, and he couldn't have the soccer mom version of his mother hanging over his shoulder while he was digging.

"Your dad won't come over." If she hadn't been so worried about Dean she would have laughed at the absurdity of the comment. Sam turned to her a question on his face, and she returned the look with one that suggested he had sprouted another head. Then the proverbial light bulb switched on above his head. Mary and John were divorced. The realization was a shock to his system. When he pictured Mary he always pictured their father right next to her, fishing, playing ball, sitting on the couch, smiling, laughing, anything other than the hardened sad man he had become since her death.

But his daydreams were flawed, they were a child's daydreams, and they hadn't been altered by the facts that had been presented to him in the last couple of years. For one, the cupid back in the day told them that John and Mary had been in a way "forced" to be lovers, and Dean even acknowledged when they went to heaven that their father had moved out right after Sam had been born, that things hadn't always been as rosy of a picture as their father painted all of those years.

But to have the reality of all of it thrust so forcefully in his face wasn't something he ever expected. It made him angry with his father. How could he have left their mother? She was so beautiful, so perfect, leave it to their father to leave someone like her. He probably cheated on her, something asinine like that. And just like that all of the anger that he had felt all of those years ago came bubbling back up to the surface as if nothing since his father had sold himself to the devil to save Dean had happened.

Mary glanced over at Sam, saw the emptions playing over her youngest son's face. "You okay Sam?" she asked and placed a hand on his arm.

"Yeah, yeah, just worried about Dean." he said and gave her a tight lipped smile and turned to watch the scenery pass by him.

Mary dropped Sam off at his condo, handed him a key off of her key ring so he could get into his own condo with a reminder that he needed to have the locks rekeyed since the muggers/murderers took his keys. Sam nodded and promised to call her if he heard from his brother, and headed towards the house. He'd been trained well enough to know that Mary's eyes were on him every second he was outside, and he was relieved that he was able to shut the door on those eyes. He carefully turned on the lights, wishing he had a gun or a knife or something, Dean had told him for years to always make sure he carried at least a box cutter on him at all times, and for once he wished that he had listened to his brother's paranoid advice.

There was thankfully no threat waiting for him when the lights came on, just a well cleaned condo, that looked nothing like his personality.

"Huh." He said and reached for the phone that he had put in his back pocket. He had to figure out why in the hell his double was in that alley way dead instead of at the motel. He checked the call log and the first four were from Dean. All of them were missed calls.

"Let's check voice mail." He mumbled to himself. "I really hope you left me a clue Dean." Apparently this guy wasn't worried about people breaking into his voice mail because the numbers were simply the first four digits of his birthday.

He went back to the last four messages and the first three were all from Dean and they were all variants on the same message, "Sam! It's me. I need your help." The desperate sound in his brother's voice made Sam's chest ach. "I need some money. Please. Please call me back."

But the last one, while from Dean's phone, wasn't from Dean at all. Someone with a deeper voice, and a badass sound about his speech spoke, "You ever want to see your dumb ass brother again, you better meet me at the alleyway between Cooper's store and Michael's restaurant in one hour, bring eight thousand cash. No police, no parents, no anyone. Just you." Sam took a deep breath and sighed. Dean had gotten in over his head. Not something completely unusual, and against normal human thugs, Sam would normally put his money on Dean, but here, Dean wasn't equipped with the survival skills that their father had drilled into them during their childhoods and adolescence. No. This Dean was completely ill equipped, and if Sam had to hazard a guess, these men were serious.

Sam went in search for the computer, he had to check his bank statements, had to figure out if he had withdrew that amount of money, had to figure out if they had taken his double's money, car, and credit cards in addition to the eight thousand and then just figured that Sam would be a liability and killed him so he wouldn't be able to go to the cops and rat them out. Or it could simply be that this universe's Sam didn't bring the money and went to the drop to tell the kidnappers that he wouldn't give the money, so they robbed and shot him and fled.

Sam hacked into his double's bank accounts and was taken aback at the amounts listed in the savings and checking. "Wow. What in the hell do I do for a living that gets me this kind of money?" He shook his head and checked to see if he had withdrew any money, and there had been no withdraws.

Sam sat back heavily in the chair and threw the mouse across the desk. "What in the hell is wrong with you dude?" he wondered aloud. He stood and ran a hand down his jaw. He had to find Dean, he had to save Dean.

He had to get to that motel. He had to get wheels. He had to save his brother.


	4. Chapter 4

Normally, Sam's first option was to get a rental car, because unlike his brother he was never as comfortable stealing a car when he could rent one, but there were multiple problems with that course of action, he didn't have a credit card, he didn't have cash, and he couldn't call a taxi to get to the rental place because he didn't have anything to pay the taxi driver with. And that left him with the course of action that he always felt was unsavory but that worked in a pinch: it was what his brother and father had taught him all of those years ago, and much to his chagrin actually perfected, they taught him to find the nearest car and boost it, drive it to wherever he needed to go, gas it up and leave it there no worse for wear, but that was out as well. People in this neighborhood would know him, and they would notice if their neighbor was stealing their car.

And Sam didn't have time to walk far enough to find a neighborhood where the likelihood of the people knowing his alter ego was less. Frustrated Sam threw the leather coat he had slipped into in order to convince his mother that he was the right Sam onto the couch, it was smothering him, he couldn't breathe. Hands firmly planted on his hips he surveyed his surroundings trying to figure something out.

"Come on Sam. Think! How do you get to this motel? How do you break in without anyone suspecting that you are doing something illegal?" he paced and ran his hands through his hair. The cell phone on the counter caught his eye every time he paced back and forth, and finally on the tenth pass, he snatched it and began scrolling through his contacts, most of which were labeled for work purposes with things such as: "Agent" "Manager" "Emily—Essentials Galleries" No one he felt that the man from this universe would call and ask for help bailing his brother out of some hellacious situation. He finally scrolled to the bottom of the list hoping that there would be someone that he could call and there was one name: "John W".

"Must be Dad." Sam said and on impulse he hit speed dial. Because if he thought about it he wouldn't have been able to dial the number, the thought of hearing John's voice one last time had been a wish of Sam's since his father's passing, and had he had time to think about it he would have panicked over what he was going to say to the man who had left Sam with so much left unsaid between the two of them.

"Sam?" Came the response.

"Dad?" Immediate tears burned the backs of Sam's eyes and he had to fight to control his voice and tears. This was not his real father, not the father that had sacrificed his own soul to save Dean's, something that Sam would ever forget and would always be grateful for—despite the subsequent events in his life, this was not the father who had forced them into hunting, the father that had introduced them to Bobby, and this was not the man who had made Dean grow up too fast and become Sam's protector at the cost of his own happiness. "Dad. Are you still looking for Dean?"

"Yeah. I just called your mother. I was just about to head back. I'm out of ideas." John sounded tired and if Sam didn't know better he thought he detected a tinge of fear to the normally unflappable voice of his father.

"I need your help."

"What?" John sounded surprised.

"I think I have a lead on Dean, I just need some wheels."

"What happened to your truck?"

"Mom didn't tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"That my truck and money and credit cards were stolen."

"Are you okay Sam?" There was genuine worry in the man's voice.

"I'm fine Dad. But I need a car."

"I'll drive you."

"Dad…"

"I'll be right there Sam." And the phone disconnected. Sam smacked the cell phone to his forehead. He didn't want his father to come with him. Sam was fairly certain that with the theft of his truck and money the people that were holding Dean had their money, but Sam was almost positive that it didn't mean that Dean was okay. And just in case he was right, he didn't want his father to get mixed up in this, whatever it was.

SNSNSNSN

Dean heard Sam's truck pull up outside of the warehouse where he being held captive, and his eyes went wider if that was possible. Sam wasn't supposed to end up here, he was supposed to meet these guys at in the alleyway, and give them the money, and they promised to let him go. This wasn't part of the deal.

Dean started getting antsy in his restraints, and managed to freshen up the cuts that circled his wrists from the zip tie restraints that had been placed on them hours ago. He heard footsteps and the man next to him who had been pointing a gun at his head walked towards the entrance, and looked out the window and must have seen what he deemed friendly faces and opened the heavy sliding door. The men who had left earlier to retrieve the money from Sam entered, alone, no Sam. Dean breathed a sigh of relief; the men must have taken a truck that sounded like Sam's. That had to be it that had to be the most logical reason. It wasn't like Sam had the corner market on trucks. Other people owned trucks, even scary men like these.

"Your brother didn't bring all of the money." The head honcho, who Dean knew was named Holt, said as he squatted down in front of Dean. Panic blazed through Dean and just as he was about to pull against his restraints again Holt backhanded him across the face, causing Dean to bite his tongue and cheek at the same time, which in turn caused a river of blood to flow out of his mouth.

"Jimmy, show Dean here what we do to people who don't pay up." Jimmy came forward and pulled out his cell phone, he punched a few buttons and turned the display to face Dean. Dean watched as Sam gave them as much cash as he had, gave them the keys to his truck, and pleaded with them to give him until morning and he would give them the rest of the money. He pleaded with them to just not hurt his brother. That he would get the money for them. They didn't let Sam get out the last beg for time when someone raised a gun and shot Sam three times in the chest. Dean heard a long, loud, echoing shout of no, and it took him some time to realize that the sound came out of his own mouth.

Dean shook and looked at Holt. "You killed Sammy?" he asked. "He didn't do anything. He would have given you the money."

Holt stood up and gave a satisfactory grin. "No, Dean. You killed your brother. Remember that as you sit here tonight." Holt and Jimmy turned and left the warehouse the same way they had come. The heavy door was put back into place and Dean trembled-Sammy was dead.


End file.
